Mary Wedd was born Mary Carr in November 1916, the daughter of a clergyman. Initially taught by her mother, she then attended St Elphin’s School, Cheltenham Ladies’ College, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, becoming one of a select number of female graduates of her generation.

Her earliest published work was a short story under her then name of Mary Harris which appeared in a book entitled The Pleasure Ground – A Miscellany of English Writing, edited by Malcolm Elwin and published by Macdonald in 1947. This was followed by a number of stories published in literary magazines of the time.

She taught at Summerhill with A S Neill, and at a number of other alternative schools such as Kilquhanity House and Long Dene, which last brought her to Kent where she has lived ever since. In the 1960s she returned to primary school teaching, using her experiences to write Born for Joy, an influential book for teachers published by Macdonalds in 1969. After taking a Diploma in Child Development at the London University Institute of Education, she went on to lecture at teacher training college, and then for many years taught English Literature at London University’s Goldsmiths College.

During the 1960s and 1970s numerous articles appeared, mostly on educational subjects, in such periodicals as The Use of English; in the early ‘70s she wrote pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, and The Sunday Times. She contributed book reviews for The Lady Margaret Hall Brown Book, and was for some time a regular reviewer for The Review of English Studies.

In 1977 she became editor of The Charles Lamb Bulletin, initially in collaboration with its founding editor Basil Savage. Her first article in the Bulletin appeared in October 1979; in 1984 she was invited to speak at Christ’s Hospital, and the text of her talk appeared in the Bulletin the following year. She continued as editor until 1988. She contributed articles on Lamb and on Leigh Hunt to The Handbook of British Romanticism, ed J R Watson, (Macmillan 1992).

She has been a regular speaker at the Wordsworth Summer and Winter schools in the Lake District, has given several talks on Coleridge at Kilve, and continues as an active member of various literary associations including The Lamb Society.